Why People Don’t Heal

How is it that people can have back pain, or depression, or even cancer, for years, and not heal?

Caroline Myss, in her book, Why People Don’t Heal, maintains that most people do not use their precious life-force energy efficiently. Instead they squander it! She suggests that the average person uses 60% – 70% of their energy simply to manage the negative experiences of their childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, as well as to hold on to the losses, disappointments and resentments of the past. Another 10% is used up worrying about, planning for and trying to control the future.

This leaves very little energy for the present moment – or for healing. Thus, people remain totally reliant on chemical medicine for their healing. The problem with this is that if we heal the body, but not the person’s energy, the pain or illness will likely return. How can we reclaim the energy we are losing to maintain the past and control the future – and harness it for healing in the present instead?

The Secret to Healing

In order to heal ourselves, we must maintain most of our consciouness in present time – not in the past, not in the future, but in the now. Life has a way of bringing us – and our energy – into present time. Often it is through trauma. When we find ourselves in the midst of a disaster, have an unexpected accident, or discover that our lives suddenly are in danger, we become very focused on the present moment. We bring all our consciouness into the now instinctively. Suddenly, the past does not matter. The future does not matter. Only this moment exists.

The power of such present-focused energy is demonstrated when a mother, seeing her child trapped under a car, suddenly becomes able to lit the car off the ground so her child can be rescued. Such an act can occur when we become focused in the present moment, because fear – and its effect of disempowerment – only occurs when we bring the past into the future. When we are truly in the moment, truly awesome amounts of strength and power are available to us!

In his book The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle reminds us that “The past has no power over the present moment.” We can either find ways to root ourselves firmly in the present, or wait until a disaster or a life-threatening illness makes us do it. The simple solution lies in committing to a daily practice that brings us into the present moment, such as meditation, yoga or chi-gong. Even taking a few moments out of your busy day to breathe or going for a short walk can re-focus you back into the moment. Positive energy practises like these, plus doing the inner work of self-reflection that transforms your consciousness, can ensure that you free yourself from the constrictions of your past and create the best conditions for permanent healing to take place.